Brandon,
Exactly my point. I see so many brands putting ads just trying to sell all the time. They always have their “link to buy” in their ads. Instead, they can use the same budget to get more followers and then use landing pages or opt-ins. Permission marketing. 
Thanks for chiming in!
Rohan
Exactly. It seems we are both long term thinkers.
The majority of people only think in the short term perspective, and want instant success. This is unrealistic, and does not build your business on a firm foundation. I see this all the time, and these people have such confidence haha.
With all my IG accounts I focus on engagement only. For the first month or two the account grows very slow but keeps a high engagement rate. After some time passes, my accounts grow faster compared to those who are only focusing on followers.
I have tried both methods side by side. When I focus on gaining more followers, I notice the accounts grow at a fast rate compared to focusing on engagement. However when I focus on engagement after 60 days or so the accounts grow faster compared to the other method of focusing on gaining followers only. On top of that I also maintain a good engagement rate.
Wow! Thanks for sharing your insights. Doing the right thing creates a snowball effect whereas doing what is easy is a recipe for mediocrity. Proud of you! 
My Pleasure!
I could not agree more with you!
Hi Brandon,
I agree with you engagement is important but why are they mutually exclusive to gaining followers. Surely you can gain loads of followers and keep the engagement up? Let me know if they are wrong - would be interested to here. Secondly how do you measure your engagement? By just looking generally through likes and comments of your posts or is there a more scientifc approach.
Thanks 
There are only so many social actions you can preform every day on an Instagram account without getting banned. You can choose to use these social actions to gain more followers, or you can use them to increase your engagement with your current followers. Instead of commenting on accounts that do not follow me, I comment on my followers posts instead.
Yes there are different strategies that work for both, however I find the best success rate by mainly focusing on engagement only. Instagram really likes it, and ranks your account higher. The higher your engagement ratio is, the more often your pictures get featured and seen by millions.
I honestly just look at the likes, pictures, and followers and can tell if the engagement is good or not. Every account is different since they are in different niches. Its obvious that an account that posts pictures of animals will have more comments compared to an account that posts pictures of gym equipment.
My goal for all my accounts is to have a 25% engagement ratio.
If my account has 10k followers, the pictures should have 2,500 likes.
There are many other factors that take place also. For example If you are posting lots of pictures every day, each picture will receive less likes.
I discovered posting 15-24 times a day increases your engagement tremendously ( coupled with follow and hastags) I tested with accounts I left dormant for a while, the engagement just steadily rose through the roof in just a few days time.
I just wanted to comment here as I am very interested in engagement as well. Now that I see that you aim for 25% engagement I realize that my engagement of 10 - 13% is quite low.
With regards to engaging with users there are two questions that come to mind:
Post engagement: When a follower comments on your post do you actually take the time to reply or is this not really necessary? I can imagine that if you personally have 1000’s of IG accounts that replying to each and every comment is not possible.
Commenting on users posts who engaged with your posts: I have the same question here; I think its very important to go and support/comment on the peoples posts who commented on yours. I currently always take the time to comment on the pages of my top commentors. How is this done when there are 100’s if not 1000’s of IG accounts?
While I currently enjoy engaging right now on my IG accounts I realize that when I set up more accounts this will be near impossible. Or perhaps there is some handy setting on MP that I am missing.
DO keep in mind that the more followers an account has, the lower your engagement rate will become. There is only so much you can do. Although a 25% engagement rate on an 5k account is quite good, a 10% engagement rate on an account with 50k followers is equally the same. (This is just an example and is not accurate).
If you only have a few accounts, then YES reply to any comments that you can reply to. This will make each person who commented feel special. This also increases the user you replied to may comment back (increasing your engagement). In addition others will get to see your personality, and may choose to also comment or at least have a more emotional connection to you & your account. Instagram loves comments, and the more comments your picture has, the higher chance it will get featured, and the more exposure your account will be granted.
If you have lots of accounts, it will be very difficult to reply to your comments. In this case you may want to only reply to comments on a few of your top accounts to keep them growing fast and maintain a high engagement rate.
The answer to this is very similar to the one previous. The only difference is the fact you are boosting their engagement rate, and the only effect it has on you is that they may be more active than before. I personally would target users who dont interact with my content as much as others do. This would have a larger impact since they can obviously spend more time on my account compared to someone who is already engaging quite a bit.
In any business, you always want to have regular customers, so you provide them with loyalty discounts. With that being said, they can only buy so much since they only make so much/month. So in order to increase your sales more dramatically you want to increase the amount of new customers and encourage them to buy things more often. You need a good balance. So in the sense of social media, you already have your regulars who engage daily as much as they can. If they are doing this continually there is no need to comment on their posts. It would be better to get new followers to do the same. In Instagram’s eyes, they prefer the majority engages with your content less often vs a select few who engage often.
If you have hundreds of accounts this will also be very difficult to do.
You can however use the auto comment feature and comment on your followers pictures using emojis. Since its automated, you do not want to appear as a robot with random replies that do not relate to the posted content. So you want to reply with generic replies which will suit nearly any picture. Emojis are the best way to do this.
Lastly, every account is limited to a unknown amount of comments/day. With that being said we want to be as productive as possible with each comment. Your first priority would be to reply to comments on your own pictures. If you have not met your unknown amount of comments that day, you can use the remainder to comment on your followers pictures.
Thanks for your indepth explanation here! So meaning extract all my current followers and then use only emoji to comment on their pictures. However I would need to think where it would be more beneficial to use up my comments:
What I your opinion is a safe amount of comments per day? And what percentages are optimum in each category to increase engagement?
Just thinking off the top of my head:
I personally would only Comment on own posts after users have commented. If your account does not have enough comments to reply to, then you can use your remaining quota of comments for Emoji comment on users posts who follow me. I find follow (auto comment after follow) is annoying for most users, and will have a negative effect (My opinion)
I never comment using automation. I find it to risky, and so therefor it is not worth the risk in my eyes. I will however reply occasionally to posts manually in my spare time. With that being said I would not be able to provide you with a safe amount of comments per day. Maybe someone else can chime in to answer this question.
Comment on own posts after users have commented would be the #1 method (out of the 3 you stated) which will increase your engagement.
Hey! Nice thinking 
Most people do not take the time to think of the result of each action. Although you did a great job, I have some additional points to add
Follow (auto comment after follow)
Best method to increasing daily followers
This will have a peacock effect. Basically you follow them (1st notification), You comment on their post right after (2nd notification), and you like their pictures (3rd notification or more depending on how many pictures you likes). This will make your account stand out of their notifications and increase your follow back rate. The downside is that it although this method will increase your daily followers, if they are not active on your account after day one it lowers your engagement rate.
The billboard effect. Basically when you comment on someone elses account, your comment will remain there for all their followers and viewers to see. If your comment stands out (using emojis, or showing personality), others will be intrigued and may click on your username and proceed to follow your account. This will increase your exposure rate, and the more comments on different accounts, the more bread crumbs you leave so others can find your account. This method has the best effect when you comment on accounts that are in the same or similar niche as you.
Comment on own posts after users have commented
Best method to increasing engagement
When you comment on your own pictures, your comment number increases, and more users are likely to read the comments and reply with their own comment. If you show your personality, likability, or reply with your opinion to a controversial subject you will further increase the chances they comment back.
Users you replied to will feel special since the account owner chose to reply to their comment. The more followers you have, the more special they feel. Others will see this, and will likely comment more often on your pictures to get your attention, and receive a reply from you making them feel special also.
People do not like to be the first few to comment. If you are engaging with your followers by replying, you are creating more comments, and increasing the likelihood of additional comments.
More comments increases your chance of getting featured on the Top Post section. Its easy to gain a steady rate of followers & likes, but its hard to get a steady amount of comments. Lack of comments seems to the the most common reason why pictures are not featured under hashtags. If you get featured, your pictures are seen by thousands and possibility millions (depending on the hashtag) which will dramatically increase that pictures comments, likes, and new followers.
Emoji comment on users posts who follow me
_Increase engagement rate & followers
When your pictures are likes, Instagram checks to see if the like came from a follower or from a non-follower. Non-follower likes have a lower effect on your total engagement rate. This is mainly to prevent users from artificially boosting their likes with bot followers. Since you are commenting on your followers picture, if they return the favor and comment or like back, it will have a larger positive effect to your engagement rate.
The billboard effect. Basically when you comment on someone elses account, your comment will remain there for all their followers and viewers to see. If your comment stands out (using emojis, or showing personality), others will be intrigued and may click on your username and proceed to follow your account. This will increase your exposure rate, and the more comments on different accounts, the more bread crumbs you leave so others can find your account. This method has the best effect when you comment on accounts that are in the same or similar niche as you.
Thanks for the very detailed explanation of each comment option. Everything makes perfect sense. When I saw this message I quickly logged into MP and turned off my auto comment tool. I now have the Insta Comment module and its a total lifesaver in terms of replying to comments on a post.
You are surely welcome!
Glad to hear you you got the Insta Comment module and its a lifesaver for you
how i can find the right hashtags for me and my niche/acc ?
model,student,traveller and fitness
Click Here - To see lists of thousands of hashtags in different niches that you can use.
Click Here - To see how to research the right hashtags to use with your account.
Click Here - To purchase a service which will provide you with hashtags in your niche, which will get your pictures featured under the Top Post section of every hashtag.
I am trying to find out more on hashtag research, since people around here think I am doing it wrong, but when I click on your links all I get is this.
Does ALL of that have to be level 2??
Just FYI, @BrandonBerner has been on hiatus for the last 3 months if not more, so don’t expect a reply, at least any time soon.
it’s on a higher level that you currently don’t have access to yet. Keep contributing and then you’ll be able to work your way up and get access to more posts.
